


Between the Calm and the Storm

by kasiapeia



Series: Neither Time Nor Space Could Keep Us Apart [2]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Bungie owns my soul and I'm past the point of caring, Pre-Destiny 2, Takes place shortly after the end of Destiny 1's campaign, The Speaker and his rules can both be thrown out of a window, and you know what? Mara Sov can join him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 08:09:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17321213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kasiapeia/pseuds/kasiapeia
Summary: "The past is not something we should concern ourselves with," the Speaker had told her, as cold and as impassive as ever. "Leave this be, Guardian. I will not tell you twice."She doesn't listen. She has no name, and the few fragmented memories that make their way into her mind are little more than painful reminders of what she had lost. A name. That's all that she wants. Just her name, and that will be enough.But Mara Sov gives her so much more.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story takes place shortly before House of Wolves, and involves a Guardian who was alive during the Mid-City Age and fought in the Battle of Twilight Gap. (And just because I know it's weird, Than is pronounced as Tan with a silent H.)

She picks at the dark lines standing out against her pale blue skin, fingers tracing the only thing that she has left to tell her who she was before. (Before is such a strange descriptor, she thinks, but there are few other words she can use to explain the empty hollowness in her mind when she thinks back to who she was before the Light.)

“You don’t have to do this.” Than rarely does anything but promote her bad ideas, few and far between though they might be, but there is a tremor in his voice as he turns his blue ocular lens towards her. The Ghost hovers just over her shoulder, blue and silver shell glittering in the dim interior lights of her ship. “Zavala won’t be happy with you when he hears what you’ve done.”

She pays him no mind, nails continuing to catch on the ever-so-slightly raised lines that curl around her wrist and forearm. Small droplets of indigo blood begin to bead where she has dug too deep. Zavala will forgive her in time, of that much she is certain. The Speaker, on the other hand…

She is not one to wear her heart on her sleeve, but her distaste for the Speaker is all but common knowledge within the ranks of the Light-Bearers. They whisper about it when they think she isn’t listening, spreading tales of how she is a hair’s breadth away from going rogue. “What a shame,” they say. “How long will it take before she ends up like Eris Morn?”

The rumours just make her grit her teeth and persist on, no matter how much the Vanguard plead with her to let the past be. Even Cayde-6, ridiculous as always, goes solemn and stern when the matter is brought up. It is only Ikora, sweet precious Ikora who thinks she doesn’t notice how the Warlock Vanguard’s gaze drifts to her when she thinks she isn’t looking, who remains silent. She does not dare to speak out against the Speaker, but she is too clever to not know that she cannot rest until she finds out the truth.

“The Speaker won’t let you back into the City if you do this,” continues Than, as though she has ever wanted the Speaker’s approval. She doesn’t need him to tell her what she can and cannot do. There was a time that she wanted for nothing but the Warlock’s approval, but those times are long since passed. She’d used to view him as infallible, the sole beacon of hope that humanity still has, but after Twilight Gap…

After Twilight Gap, everything had changed.

She mutters a curse under her breath, angry that she’d let herself think about Twilight Gap. She’d sworn to leave it behind her, to let it be forgotten. She has spent far too much time already mourning those she’d lost, and she knows the friends she’d lost wouldn’t want her to mourn for the rest of her life.

Images flash before her eyes in rapid succession. Blood and gunfire, roaring orange flames, and beloved friends falling down beside her. She shakes her head as though that will make the memories go away but instead the bright orange light cast by the fires that had almost razed the world to the ground shift to deep indigoes.

 _“This is what you get for standing against my family. Your brother and sister are next,”_ whispers a voice in her ear, white-hot agony blossoming across her stomach.

“Guardian!” Than swoops into view before her, tinny voice fraught with concern as she doubles over. She holds up a hand as though to wave him off, but he wants none of it. “Are the visions bothering you again?”

“I’m fine.” She hardly sounds it. Her voice is low, raspy, as she fights to blink back tears. There isn’t anything hurting her, but she is in agony nonetheless, the memory so vivid and so bright that it’s almost as though she’s back there, experiencing it all over again.

“They’re getting worse.” It isn’t uncommon for Guardians to have fragmented memories of their lives before they’d been revived by their Ghost for the first time, but her visions are different, all encompassing. Voices ring in her ears for hours afterwards, saying things that she doesn’t fully understand.

_“This is the legacy you intend to leave behind? I have to laugh. You scare her, but you do not scare me. How is this so? She, our beloved Queen, is scared of you, but what are you but a child playing war?”_

“I’m fine,” she says again, teeth gritted as the pain fades to the back of her mind.

Though her Ghost says nothing, it’s clear that Than does not believe her. She can almost sense his disapproval hanging in the air as they draw closer to their destination. There are no cosairs that fly out to meet them this time. Instead, the Reef is silent as the Guardian’s ship approaches ever-closer to the heart of the Awoken, only to transmat onto the closest landing area.

She is devoid of weapons, though she does not need them to be dangerous, and her heels clack against the cold metal floor. She has been here but once before, and still she walks the halls as though she has spent her entire life in this ruin of a ship. There seems to be no one else here, the halls silent but for Than’s quiet mechanical whirring as he hovers by her shoulder, and her steady footsteps.

“Guardian.” Mara Sov does not get up from her throne to greet the intruder, but she cannot hide the glimmer of interest in her pale, glowing eyes as she lifts her chin. One leg crosses over the other—the only sign of discomfort at the Guardian’s presence. “I do not recall inviting you to speak with me.”

“If you were not curious as to why I am here, you would have prevented me from entering the Reef in the first place.” The Guardian’s response is as cool as hers, but such impassivity does not come as easily to her as it does to the Awoken’s Queen. Behind her carefully controlled demeanor, anxiety gnaws at her stomach. “Yet, I encountered no one as I came here. Do you not fear that I am here to kill you?”

Mara Sov only laughs in response to her question.

“I don’t like her,” Than whispers in her ear. “Can we go now? Please? Maybe off to a beach somewhere—” The Guardian bats him away, taking a step closer towards Mara Sov.

“I confess,” says the Awoken Queen, “I am surprised it took you this long to come find me. Were you assured by the fact that you walked away from our last encounter alive? I make no promises that I will grant you such mercy this time.” Something akin to discomfort passes over the Queen’s features as she meets the Guardian’s gaze. “Go on then. Say what you have come to say.”

“Is there any need?” asks the Guardian, noting the way Mara Sov’s gaze flicks down to glance at the markings upon her bared arm. “I know Awoken heraldry when I see it.”

“The Earth-born have forsaken their origins and are no longer my problem. Nor, for that matter, are the Light-touched.”

“I wasn’t always Light-touched though, was I?” The Guardian steps even closer, and Mara Sov—untouchable, immortal, and above the petty concerns of the mortal world— _recoils_. “You recognise this symbol. You know who I am.”

“I cannot imagine that your precious little Vanguard are pleased with you trying to uncover your past,” says Mara Sov, and for the first time in a long time, she is nervous. Even to the Guardian, that much is clear. She is pure starlight—ethereal, untouchable. She is the heart of all the Awoken.

And she is scared.

Of _her_.

Mara grips the arms of her throne a little tighter, if only to hide the way her hands shake as she clutches onto the title she had carved for herself when the rest of the world had faded away. Then, slowly, finger by finger, she lets go of her throne.

“So, Guardian,” she says, voice like poisoned honey. She leans forward in her throne, pale eyes glittering like stars, but they, like stars, burn with bright, cold fire that sees right through to her Light and Dark filled soul. “What is it that you wish of me?”

The Guardian raises left hand higher, as though the Awoken Queen is blind to the crests that adorns her skin the same way her stomach is marred with a long, ugly scar. “You know what I want.”

“No,” she says slowly, white, pointed teeth bared in a cruel facsimile of a smile. “What is it that you _wish_ of me?”

She had heard tales of the Awoken Queen long before she’d ever stepped foot in the Reef. A Guardian though she might be, and not under Mara Sov’s iron-tight rule, she still walks with the memory of what the Queen had done for her people, even if the Awoken are her people no longer. The Light-touched are not under her domain, nor could they ever be. The Awoken are fickle things, their souls equal parts Light and Dark. Had Mara not made them, she doubts they would ever bow to a single person.

Even as she is as close to godhood as she claims to be.

“What will you ask in return?” whispers the Guardian. Her dark, indigo hair falls across her glowing, silver-white eyes as a soft brush of air passes through the air. The Queen is untouched, white hair falling in soft cascades around her slender visage.

She smiles. “Nothing.” The Guardian knows enough about her to feel at ease. “I only ask that when I next call upon your aid, you will answer.”

“Why would you need my help?”

“I might not need your help, but the Awoken will,” she says.

“I already owe you a favour. Is that not enough?”

“Two transactions,” says Mara with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Two payments. It will not be me who asks for your aid either, but my Wrath is a part of me, and if what I have seen will truly come to pass, then you will want to fight alongside her.”

“What does that mean? And why is the payment you request help? There is so much more a Guardian could give you.”

Mara pushes herself to her feet. The Awoken Queen is not one to debase herself by putting herself on equal footing with her subordinates. But the Guardian belongs to no one. She belongs not to the Vanguard, who would rather watch her grit her teeth and suffer through her agonising flashbacks. She belongs not to the Speaker, who would rather lose good men and women than consider that he might not be right about everything. Even the Traveller has no claim over her; the dead god’s last gift might have brought her back to life in the burnt ruins of a mansion in the Reef, but the Traveller’s claim lies upon her Ghost, and not upon her.

And she most certainly does not belong to Mara Sov.

“You will find out, in time,” says the Queen. “Do you accept the terms of our agreement?”

Silence. Then—

“I do.”

They do not shake, nor do they write down their agreement. Neither is enough of a fool to cross the other. The Guardian knows how fierce the Queen’s Wrath is, and the Queen, for her own reasons that she shan’t share, fears the Awoken Warlock standing before her.

“Go to the furthest reaches of the Reef,” says Mara after a moment’s pause. “You will find a ship there, its name long since forgotten. There you will find the answers you seek.”


	2. Chapter 2

The ruins of the ship are barely holding together, metal creaking as she approaches. It towers far above her head, silver hull shining in the pale purple light of the Reef. It looks abandoned, but then again, she had ventured into many places that were rumoured to have been abandoned only to find inhabitants still residing there, and fiercely angry that she was intruding.

“I don’t like the look of this place,” says Than, shimmering into existence before her eyes as she reaches for her holstered hand cannon. “We should leave.”

“Weren’t you the one saying I should get away from the Tower more?” she says, letting out a small laugh even as she wants to say that he’s right. There’s a distinct aura of Darkness around this ruined ship, and she almost wants to run back to the City, even if she knows that she will not be welcomed with open arms.

She has seen how they treat Guardians who do not blindly follow the Traveller and what the Speaker claims that it says.

“You _know_ that this isn’t what I meant,” Than says, bitter and displeased, but still lighting up the path before her as she steps into the dark ship, finger hovering over the trigger of her gun. With every step she takes, she’s painfully aware that the ship might come crashing down around her, and she does not know if Than—with all of his abilities—could bring her back from that.

Swaths of deep, midnight blue fabric hang from the walls, long since tattered and ruined, but even then, she recognises the circular shape in the centre, eight lines evenly jutting out and diverging in separate directions. The Guardian gently touches the banner, tracing the heraldic pattern that matches the one on her left wrist.

“What was this place?” she whispers as Than flits about, whirring as he scans the debris filling the room.

“It looks like it belonged to a noble Awoken house,” says the Ghost. “It’s been in ruins for years…”

“Before the Collapse?”

“No.” Than bobs in the air as though he’s thinking. “Later than that, but even then…”

“When you revived me where did you find me?” she asks, turning her pale-eyed gaze to settle on the glittering blue Ghost.

He hesitates. “Guardian, you can’t go back there. You shouldn’t even be _here_ as it is—”

“ _Than_.”

If he could, he would sigh. “It wasn’t even the Reef. Not really. Some distant asteroid with almost nothing on it but a single building that had been burnt to the ground. I don’t think it was built to last more than a decade or two.”

She says nothing and turns her attention to the scraps of paper scattered across the nearest table. When was the last time she saw someone write something down? It must have been centuries. Gingerly, as to not damage the fragile page, she picks up a single sheet. There are only four legible words:

_Our house has fallen._

“We should leave,” says Than, looking at the page over her shoulder.

“I’m not leaving until I’ve gotten what I came for.”

“Which is what, exactly?” His voice is sharp, biting. “What do you hope to gain from this, Guardian? This place has been abandoned for centuries. If this house fell, what’s the likelihood that anyone still lives? Or are you looking for your name? Your history? Remembered what that got Ana—”

She freezes at the mention of Ana Bray. She can still remember the look on the young Hunter’s face as she’d gone over the Wall. They hadn’t even found a body to give her a proper burial. The Guardian turns away from the Ghost then. “Ana didn’t die because she wanted to know who she was. She died trying to save the City because the Speaker is too much of a fool to recognise that the Guardians need to change if we’re ever going to survive.” She falls silent. “I’m going off by myself. I’ll meet up with you in thirty.”

“Guardian—”

She doesn’t stay to hear Than’s objections. They have a strange dichotomy; he is prepared to rush into danger a moment’s notice but refuses to break a single one of the City’s rules while she takes careful consideration before putting herself in harm’s way but would break every rule without hesitation.

The Guardian does not stay to hear what her Ghost has to stay, making her way down the long, winding hallway before slipping into the nearest unlocked room. It’s far more untouched than the one Than is still exploring, despite the thick layer of dust that covers every surface of the room. The same crest that adorns her wrist is engraved into the surface of a large, rectangular table.

She doesn’t understand. None of this provides her the information that she wants—no, _needs_ to know. All she’s seeing is the remnants of a life before this one. She has more question than she’d had when she’d first arrived. Something hangs on the wall, buried beneath a thick sheet of fabric. Her hand reaches for it, and then—

“She told me you’d be here.”

The Guardian whirls around on her feet to find a lone Awoken male standing in the doorway, his hand resting on the frame. His white-blue eyes glow in the dim light, something strange passing through them as his eyes meet her. Something… sad.

“Who did?” Her fingers hovers over the trigger of her gun.

“The Queen.”

The Guardian swallows, gritting her teeth as she lowers her weapon. She has no reason not to believe him. The Awoken are incapable of dishonouring their Queen, bound to her in a way that she cannot understand. “Who are you?”

“Does it matter? Would my name mean anything to you?”

She supposes it doesn’t, and he is right in that his name would mean nothing. She is here because she knows nothing, and now the Queen has sent him here to answer her questions. “What was this place?”

“This was the home of House Qerel.” The man takes a step further into room, slow and still. “Before it fell.”

She has so many questions. “What happened to it? Where did everyone go?”

“Dissent among her people is not something the Queen tolerates,” he whispers, tracing the curves in the table’s engraving. “They are lucky if she gives them a chance to flee to never return. The Qerels were among the first to organise themselves after the Awoken first awoke, and the children that they bore… The matriarch had the first of the Reef-born Awoken. A girl. A young girl, and her brother, born moments after her.”

Her mouth as is as dry as the deserts of Mars.

“Time passed,” he continues, “and the girl grew. She was as beautiful as her mother, made of pure starlight. Some said that she was more Awoken than the Queen herself was.”

Memories flash through her mind.

_Bare feet curled in blades of long, flowing grass. Wind flowing through midnight hair. A familiar smile, the scent of home._

“She was set to lead the most powerful family that there was, with a fortune large enough to make Calus himself jealous, and influence that prevented a single soul from keeping a secret from her.” His gaze meets hers. “And that created enemies.”

A shiver ripples down her spine as he rounds the table, taking a few steps towards her. “But she knew something no other Awoken did. She knew the truth about Mara Sov. She knew things that could topple empire the Queen had lovingly created for her people, and she had the means to use it. She knew the first lie ever told. And then, one day, she left to speak to another house about a truce, the terms of which were never revealed, and she never returned. Her younger brother and sister all met unfortunate ends shortly thereafter, and House Qerel, without any heirs, fell to ruin.”

A beat passes, then two. “Who are you?” she whispers.

“You don’t know me, Iriah. Not anymore,” he says, and the name feels like she’s been punched in the stomach. It’s unfamiliar, and yet, somehow, it’s familiar at the same time. She does not recognise the syllables upon her own tongue, but her heart surges, connecting to the past in a way she cannot. “She could have stopped it, you know. She could have saved them all, but why would she? When they stood between her and godhood?”

“How do you know all this?” she demands. “Why are you the only one who yet lives?”

“I was there,” he says wistfully. “I was there, Iriah, when it all happened. I watched the fall of an empire. I watched her stand before the fires and claim that she couldn’t have done a thing. And who would believe the word of a single man who claimed to know what happened to the true First Awoken? She knew that she could not be touched. All those who could have felled her were dead.” He pauses. “Or so she thought.”

“I’m not the person I was before I was revived by the Light.”

“She knows,” he says. “There are many secrets that our Queen keeps. You knew them all once. Perhaps you could learn them again. That is all I can give you, child. Anything else you learn, you will have to learn from her. I have spent years trying to piece together the fragments left behind when the Qerels fell, and I still have learned nothing.”

He lets out a breath, glancing briefly to his feet. “I wish you luck, Iriah. You have been granted a second chance when so many others have not.” He goes to leave, only to hesitate in the doorway, caught in the threshold as he fights to speak words he should not say. “You still look so much like your mother.”

“Wait—”

But he disappears before she can stop him, leaving little more than the tell-tale glittery smoke of a transmat in his wake. Her outstretched hand closes on nothing. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots the cloth covered frame. The Guardian— _Iriah_ —takes slow, careful steps towards it, choking on dust and ash and she pulls it off in one clean motion.

Beneath, the paint is faded, and charred but still the oil colours—real, _proper_ paints, like the ones from before the Golden Age—shine bright. She recognises her own visage easily, all sharp lines in shades of blue. The man standing next to her she does not recognise, his features similar to her own, but his skin is a soft, pale green, and his eyes are as gold as the woman’s standing next to him. Behind the three of them, stands a woman, a soft smile upon her lips, and her hands resting on the shoulders of those sitting before. By her side—

That strange man, with pale green skin, and eyes as white as hers.

She barely manages to make out the inscription beneath.

_Nela and Aavel Qerel with their children, Iriah, Jaarhan, and Imen._

Each of them bears the eight-pointed star somewhere upon their skin.

“Guardian?” cries out her Ghost flitting into the room. He recoils as he takes in image. “Is that…?”

“Come,” she says, voice tight, and her hands curled into fists. “We have questions to ask Mara Sov.”

“Guardian—”

“Iriah,” she says, meeting Than’s ocular lens. “My name is Iriah.”


	3. Chapter 3

Mara Sov is as languid as ever, a cat’s smile dancing upon her lips as Iriah enters the room, a storm brewing beneath her pale blue skin. Neither her beloved Fallen bodyguards nor her brother are anywhere to be seen.

“You’ve returned.” The Queen’s voice is as smooth as silk, but it is as cold as it always is, and beneath it lies a sharpness that Iriah had come to expect. She might portray herself to be a delicate little thing, but at her core, she is as twisted as the very creature she has locked away to fulfil every one of her heart’s wishes. “Did you find your trip… enlightening?”

Iriah closes the distance between them in the blink of an eye, her hand wrapped around the Awoken Queen’s throat. “You let me die,” she snarls. “You watched as my house—my _family_ fell.”

“Are you going to kill me, Iriah?” Mara does not seem bothered by the turn of events. If anything, she seems… amused. “How would your Speaker react to that, I wonder?”

She realises then that she cannot kill Mara without the delicate peace hanging between the Last City and the Awoken falling apart. The Queen had known when she’d told her where to find her past that this is how it would end. If she dies… If Iriah kills her, then Uldred would surely launch an assault upon the Tower as revenge. The Last City would fall, and the Guardians’ centuries long oath would mean nothing.

Ana’s death would mean nothing.

“You can’t, can you?” She can almost hear the laugh Mara holds back. “As much as you claim to shun the Guardians, as much as you claim to despise the Speaker, you still care for them. That is the difference between you and I. You pretend to be untouchable, unaffected by the world around you; half Light, and half Dark as the rumours go. I know the truth. Why do you think I am the first, and you are not?”

The first lie ever told. The first secret ever kept. Those claims belong to Mara and Mara alone, but the first to awake? She is what made the Awoken into who they are today, but Iriah has the blood of the Reef in her veins.

Mara was the first to awaken, but she is the first of the Awoken.

“Kill me, Guardian,” continues Mara Sov. “I dare you.”

“Why? What would be the point? You are powerful, Mara, but you failed to kill me when I didn’t wield the Traveller’s Light. Do you think you could stop me now? For all your claims of godhood, you are still little more than a child, playing at a game she does not fully understand. I have faced gods, and I have killed them, and you know what? It was easy. Don’t doubt that I could kill you too.”

Iriah almost throws her to the ground as she lets her go, the graceful Queen stumbling as she tries to right herself, her chest heaving as she catches her breath.

“They are right when they say that I am equal parts Light and Dark,” she says. “I could kill you, and one day, I might.”

“You owe me two favours,” she hisses. “One could be that you spare my life.”

“Would you truly waste such an opportunity on something so small?” asks Iriah. Mara is silent. “I swear on the Traveller that you will not be safe from me forever. I do not follow the Speaker’s rules, but I am still a Guardian, and I have a duty to the people of the Last City, but once I am free of that duty… You’d best be on your guard. We can both play the long game.”

She does not stay to hear what Mara has to say, turning sharply on her heel and disappearing in a thin train of smoke as she transmats back to her ship.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” Than mutters as she steps into the cockpit.

“Well that took you a while. Thought you were never coming back.” Aeryn-4 is smiling as she always is, her feet kicked up on the console. Her Void Light coloured eyes meet Iriah’s. “Find what you were looking for, Sparks?”

“In a sense,” Iriah answers, pushing Aeryn’s feet down to the ground. The exo simply kicks them back up again as soon as she’s pulled away.

“Zavala called a couple ten times,” says Aeryn, as calm as ever. “The Speaker’s threatening to exile you.”

Than swoops down in front of the Warlock as she sets about starting the ship’s engines and pulling away from the wreckage the Queen had made into her palace. “Iriah, perhaps we should return to the City. Talk to the Speaker. Apologise, maybe?”

“I’m done apologising,” Iriah says through gritted teeth. “We’ve got work to do, and no one else is going to do it.”

Aeryn’s smile turns into a full fledged grin, showing off a row of metallic teeth. “So, Iriah…” Her name sounds strange on her friend’s lips, but it will become familiar in time, and if there’s one thing they Guardians have a lot of, it’s time. “Where are we going?”


End file.
